30 years ago while we were living in London, we had a group of friends that we would get together with almost every weekend. We'd alternate flats were we'd meet, make a bunch of food, and just hang out. As the years have passed, and we've moved numerous times to multiple places, the hosting and get togethers have diminished. But, even up until about 10 years ago we would at least have a yearly Christmas party and routinely have people over to grill during the summer. But, I noticed a shift even right before Covid. People seemed almost put out by being asked to come over for a get together or party. The fact that people (not the ones hosting mind you) felt as if it took too much effort to even show up was a thing.
Then, Covid pretty much killed socializing at people's homes. I do think the decline has to do with our ability to more easily entertain ourselves without interacting with other people. But, there is also a sense that it's not as important to make the effort - whether that be dressing up or simply making an appearance at a gathering. It is easier to be self-obsessed and consumed. How do we convince people that it might be worth changing our behavior not only for our own wellbeing but the greater good?
Great article Derek. One idea you could probably add to the "People are more harried..." topic is the problem of high expectations. I have challenges convincing my spouse to have people over because she is always embarrassed that our house isn't as clean as it should be or we are in the middle of a renovation project leaving a mess in one room. Our house is great, but doesn't meet a level of high expectations. I'm doubtful people in the 1950s had these same concerns.
Another awesome article, thanks so much for writing it. You get at this point without saying it in quite these words so I’ll share something that occurred to me when I read: I don’t live in my hometown (not even close), and I wonder if that’s true for more people today than it was a while back.
The data here is a little old (2015) but it shows that distance from hometown strongly increases with income and education (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html). That doesn't really fit with the finding that poorer and less educated people have the fewest friends, since they are the most likely to live where they grew up.
The same article notes that Americans as an aggregate moved less in ~2010 than in ~1980.
I hosted countless dinners and holiday parties when I started working in the 90s and 00s, including dinner for my entire office in my studio apartment, extremely casual spaghetti dinners in our newly purchased, almost furniture-free house, and Thanksgiving dinners for diplomats. In the late 00s people became less likely to RSVP, more picky about what they would eat, and generally harder to make plans with. Part of this was also people having kids to whom they devoted more and more time (sports, kid parties, etc) and me being out of town a lot of the time. As discussed in the post, it got much worse over the intervening years. One of the effects of covid/remote work is that people do things, including work, on such different schedules that it adds another degree of difficulty to the coordination problem.
So now, unfortunately, I rarely have people over, even though it’s one of my favorite things to do—I love cooking and baking but live in a two-person household. I vastly prefer in-person socializing, don’t do social media, and I watch almost no video and zero short-form. It’s profoundly depressing to me.
The comments noting “standards” are on to something IMO. Try to get over it! I did just have friends over this past weekend. We had a super simple meal of pasta, salad, and an easy apple cake. I didn’t have time to clean. When I was in my entertaining era, I liked to try out fancy recipes sometimes. People would say that they were afraid to invite me over because they didn’t cook much, but I truly didn’t/don’t care! The food isn’t the point, and nobody notices or cares about the state of your house/apartment.
maybe people have just all become more annoying in recent years so nobody wants to get together or maybe that is why i am never invited either way works i suppose
Amanda Litman wrote about her effort to host dinner every single week in 2025. She had a toddler and baby at the time. Key to her success was keeping cleanup simple and hosting dinner early so kids were welcome.
I'd be interested in hearing more about how the pandemic accelerated the trend in 2020 as the chart you shared clearly shows a huge jump from 2019 to 2020 and then slowly came back down from 2021-2022. What are these numbers like in 2026? I'd also like to know more about the people who are hosting and attending dinner parties at friends homes. I'm 40 years old with two kids in a dual income household and it took me 9 months to reschedule a family game night with my Boomer parents and Gen Z brother. We were all busy for different reasons (Boomer parents: regular international travel; my family: kids, jobs, chaos; Gen Z brother: career, friends, working out).
Great article. I would be interested to know if time spent going out to restaurants has increased much in the same period of time? I would assume it has. Are people hosting dinner parties less but going out to dinner/lunch/brunch/breakfast more?
Very interesting to see this article this week. I completely agree with it, and it ties into my writing (and so much of yours over the past several years) regarding friendship. I posted an article literally last week titled 'The Kitchen Test,' suggesting that a key indicator of whether you've truly made a friend is whether you've been invited into their kitchen. Even better if you've reciprocated and invited them in return to that place where the dishes may be piled up, the fridge bare, and that is a whole level deeper into home than even the living room (which is hard enough). And the data you present indicates that this continues to get harder.
Excellent article as usual! Missed “Guess Who’s Not Coming To Dinner” pun opportunity.
To think just a bit more about the footnote math, naively, you’d expect the amount of overlapping free time in peoples’ schedules to be a square of the average amount of free time (and cube for three people, etc.)
But when everybody knows that everybody is always busy or out of town (or politely ducking an invite to scroll TikTok), it gets worse than that: nobody wants to make plans five weeks out, only to cancel at the last minute. (OK, some people do like to cancel plans so they can stay in, per Derek’s other article, but these people presumably accepted the invite out of a sense of social obligation). Everybody still has the same 168 hours in a week, of course, but the shared knowledge that everyone is doing their own thing is toxic.
The fact that it’s short form video and not, say, work or childcare is an opportunity, though. If and when people do decide to scroll less and hang out more, the time we spend scrolling is freely, infinitely reschedulable.
30 years ago while we were living in London, we had a group of friends that we would get together with almost every weekend. We'd alternate flats were we'd meet, make a bunch of food, and just hang out. As the years have passed, and we've moved numerous times to multiple places, the hosting and get togethers have diminished. But, even up until about 10 years ago we would at least have a yearly Christmas party and routinely have people over to grill during the summer. But, I noticed a shift even right before Covid. People seemed almost put out by being asked to come over for a get together or party. The fact that people (not the ones hosting mind you) felt as if it took too much effort to even show up was a thing.
Then, Covid pretty much killed socializing at people's homes. I do think the decline has to do with our ability to more easily entertain ourselves without interacting with other people. But, there is also a sense that it's not as important to make the effort - whether that be dressing up or simply making an appearance at a gathering. It is easier to be self-obsessed and consumed. How do we convince people that it might be worth changing our behavior not only for our own wellbeing but the greater good?
Great article Derek. One idea you could probably add to the "People are more harried..." topic is the problem of high expectations. I have challenges convincing my spouse to have people over because she is always embarrassed that our house isn't as clean as it should be or we are in the middle of a renovation project leaving a mess in one room. Our house is great, but doesn't meet a level of high expectations. I'm doubtful people in the 1950s had these same concerns.
Another awesome article, thanks so much for writing it. You get at this point without saying it in quite these words so I’ll share something that occurred to me when I read: I don’t live in my hometown (not even close), and I wonder if that’s true for more people today than it was a while back.
The data here is a little old (2015) but it shows that distance from hometown strongly increases with income and education (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html). That doesn't really fit with the finding that poorer and less educated people have the fewest friends, since they are the most likely to live where they grew up.
The same article notes that Americans as an aggregate moved less in ~2010 than in ~1980.
The data behind the 2026 numbers (https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2026/9/dfp_social_activity_battery.pdf) also shows that the group most likely to have entertained at home in the past year is college graduates. Only 21% haven't, against 39% of respondents with no college.
I hosted countless dinners and holiday parties when I started working in the 90s and 00s, including dinner for my entire office in my studio apartment, extremely casual spaghetti dinners in our newly purchased, almost furniture-free house, and Thanksgiving dinners for diplomats. In the late 00s people became less likely to RSVP, more picky about what they would eat, and generally harder to make plans with. Part of this was also people having kids to whom they devoted more and more time (sports, kid parties, etc) and me being out of town a lot of the time. As discussed in the post, it got much worse over the intervening years. One of the effects of covid/remote work is that people do things, including work, on such different schedules that it adds another degree of difficulty to the coordination problem.
So now, unfortunately, I rarely have people over, even though it’s one of my favorite things to do—I love cooking and baking but live in a two-person household. I vastly prefer in-person socializing, don’t do social media, and I watch almost no video and zero short-form. It’s profoundly depressing to me.
The comments noting “standards” are on to something IMO. Try to get over it! I did just have friends over this past weekend. We had a super simple meal of pasta, salad, and an easy apple cake. I didn’t have time to clean. When I was in my entertaining era, I liked to try out fancy recipes sometimes. People would say that they were afraid to invite me over because they didn’t cook much, but I truly didn’t/don’t care! The food isn’t the point, and nobody notices or cares about the state of your house/apartment.
maybe people have just all become more annoying in recent years so nobody wants to get together or maybe that is why i am never invited either way works i suppose
Amanda Litman wrote about her effort to host dinner every single week in 2025. She had a toddler and baby at the time. Key to her success was keeping cleanup simple and hosting dinner early so kids were welcome.
https://amandalitman.substack.com/p/our-year-of-saturday-dinners
I'd be interested in hearing more about how the pandemic accelerated the trend in 2020 as the chart you shared clearly shows a huge jump from 2019 to 2020 and then slowly came back down from 2021-2022. What are these numbers like in 2026? I'd also like to know more about the people who are hosting and attending dinner parties at friends homes. I'm 40 years old with two kids in a dual income household and it took me 9 months to reschedule a family game night with my Boomer parents and Gen Z brother. We were all busy for different reasons (Boomer parents: regular international travel; my family: kids, jobs, chaos; Gen Z brother: career, friends, working out).
Great article. I would be interested to know if time spent going out to restaurants has increased much in the same period of time? I would assume it has. Are people hosting dinner parties less but going out to dinner/lunch/brunch/breakfast more?
Very interesting to see this article this week. I completely agree with it, and it ties into my writing (and so much of yours over the past several years) regarding friendship. I posted an article literally last week titled 'The Kitchen Test,' suggesting that a key indicator of whether you've truly made a friend is whether you've been invited into their kitchen. Even better if you've reciprocated and invited them in return to that place where the dishes may be piled up, the fridge bare, and that is a whole level deeper into home than even the living room (which is hard enough). And the data you present indicates that this continues to get harder.
https://tshapedengineer.substack.com/p/the-kitchen-test
Excellent article as usual! Missed “Guess Who’s Not Coming To Dinner” pun opportunity.
To think just a bit more about the footnote math, naively, you’d expect the amount of overlapping free time in peoples’ schedules to be a square of the average amount of free time (and cube for three people, etc.)
But when everybody knows that everybody is always busy or out of town (or politely ducking an invite to scroll TikTok), it gets worse than that: nobody wants to make plans five weeks out, only to cancel at the last minute. (OK, some people do like to cancel plans so they can stay in, per Derek’s other article, but these people presumably accepted the invite out of a sense of social obligation). Everybody still has the same 168 hours in a week, of course, but the shared knowledge that everyone is doing their own thing is toxic.
The fact that it’s short form video and not, say, work or childcare is an opportunity, though. If and when people do decide to scroll less and hang out more, the time we spend scrolling is freely, infinitely reschedulable.
At least in my case, this has carried over into retirement. I have plenty of time available and no real desire to increase my social activity.